Port board refuses to reveal spending details

Two contianer ships are shown at the Ceres container port in March. Halifax Port Authority has released a financial report that contains very limited spending disclosure. (TED PRITCHARD / Staff/ File)

Halifax Port Authority board members and staff spent $669,000 on travel and hospitality in 2013.

It is refusing to provide a breakdown of who travelled where, how much they spent and what benefit the port received in return.

“For reasons of commercial sensitivity we will not be disclosing the individual amounts and/or specific travel locations of those involved,” says a statement on the authority’s website.

It also spent $608,000 in 2013 to cover club memberships and professional fees for staff and board members. This includes the bar society fees of port authority president Karen Oldfield. Oldfield negotiated having her fees covered on top of her salary, which came in at $371,000 in 2013.

The disclosure is so heavily redacted that the authority refuses to say how much money it donates to charities.

It did reveal that it has racked up $1.3 million in bad debt over the past three years. That includes $686,000 in write-offs in 2011, when the Halifax Seaport Farmers’ Market, a tenant of the authority, became insolvent.

The following year, it wrote off $452,000 when American Feeder Lines International of New York went bankrupt. The authority had been providing financial support to the company, which shipped goods between Boston, Portland, Maine, and Halifax.

The authority says it plans to spend $2.7 million to renovate the farmers market space over three years.

Halifax NDP MP Megan Leslie had sought information on the authority’s spending in Parliament through what is known as an order paper question.

The federal government, which owns the land and oversees the port, refused the request and told Leslie to ask the authority directly.

She filed her questions through access to information laws, and the results are posted on the authority’s website.

It paid $250,000 in remuneration to its board of directors in 2013. Board chairman Geoffrey Machum alone made $75,000 for the year.